This is an English transcript of the 17th issue of a Russian podcast Yet Another Perl Podcast, recorded on the 17th of April 2013 and aired on April 28th. The original audio of the podcast is available at its official site. The recording is also available for direct mp3 download.
The participants are identified by their GitHub handles (not twitter ones):
The translation is done "subtitle-style" - the word order and the specifics of the speech of each participant were preserved as much as possible. This was done to allow one to match the translation to the spoken original, in order to be able to experience first-hand the delivery of any particular statement. As a result of this, the translation at times strays rather far from valid/common English - this is intentional.
All translator notes/additions are rendered as italic. Everything else is an as-close-as-possible representation of the original conversation.
Enjoy!
00:00@degtyarev-dm: You are listening to the 17th issue of "Yet Another Perl Podcast". Today in the podcast I will be joined by Viktor Turskyi - Hi Viktor
@koorchik: Hello, Dmitry, Hello.
@degtyarev-dm: For a second time in this podcast we are joined by Andrew Shitov - Hello Andrew
@ash: Hello, hello.
@degtyarev-dm: And also for a second time we are joined by Viacheslav Tykhanovskyi. Hello Viacheslav.
@vti: Yes Hello.
@ash: Actually there is more, it so happened that we were visited by Anatoly Sharifulin.
@koorchik: Hello Viacheslav.
@sharifulin: Hello All! I guess everyone is a bit shocked ;)
unintelligible
@degtyarev-dm: Well excellent
@sharifulin: We can end the recording now
@koorchik: Let's have Sharifulin... let's have Sharifulin start telling something - and we'll listen.
@sharifulin: OK, let me reach the proper condition[1] and I'll start
00:55@degtyarev-dm: The first bit of news we wanted to talk about is an article on blogs.perl.org, by someone Curtis Poe (@Ovid). It is titled "Perl 7".
01:05@sharifulin: Perl 7 - to be or not to be
@ash: Nope, not to be.
@sharifulin: That is the question. Roleplayed!
@degtyarev-dm: Just like Perl 6 and stuff...? Andrew, your opinion?
01:18@ash: Well... then let's back up. About Curtis Poe. Curtis Poe actually isn't some unknown dude. On the contrary he is quite known. At times he comes up with large philosophical posts. He also has a massive blog about living abroad / being an expat. But on the 6th on February he wrote literally a two-line blogpost. He wrote about being at FOSDEM couple days ago, where he was approached by folk... OK at FOSDEM there was a stand dedicated to Perl. They had this huge library containing, I don't know, 200 Perl books issued in various years. There was a large camel . And... Curtis ;)
02:02@ash: So people were stopping by and asking what is this Perl thing, and why after a decade it is still on version 5, and... So in short his impression was that people still think Perl is a language not unlike Cobol, which has long stopped evolving and is generally dated. And then (in the blogpost) he stated - what if we had Perl 7? Ovid also worded this question in a way, which led, at least me, to believe that he is behind this idea. Turns out this was not the case - he simply wanted to see what does the community think about Perl 7.
02:36@ash: And yeah, this kicked off a "cloud-based shitstorm"[2]. Immediately people started writing blogs.perl.org posts containing their own comments. To these more comments were added - as in more posts were then written to comment on these posts-as-comments. The whole thing was rather interesting. Though, in the end the whole thing ended with no results.
02:56@degtyarev-dm: In general this is not the first time that whole question is being raised, we even discussed this before.
03:03@ash: This is not the first time. One can google up 2008 postings on perlmonks, where people ask "What will be Perl 7 like"... And yeah, the question is periodically being raised. And it looks like... well I am not so sure it will be raised in the future. At the very least concerning the folks who took part in the current discussion - they do not ... most of them do not want to discuss Perl 7 anymore.
03:30@degtyarev-dm: But in general - does any of the podcast participants think there is a point to switch...?
03:36@ash: Yes, I believe this should have been done, in the first place, when Perl 5.10 became available. But yeah back then nobody thought that the version number can change... At the very least now with the next release 5.20, we can say "here, this isn't 5.20 this is Perl 7[3]", with the Changelog containing the list of changes that took place not only since, say 5.18, but since 5.10. Then there will be a huge list containing, besides the amusing function say(), a pile of cool stuff. Like some updates to regular expressions like /r or /a... unicode... So everything... So there will be an impressive list, which yes, indeed will mean "this is a big change - it deserves a bump of the major version".
04:22@ash: Because among the arguments against renaming to Perl 7, it is often mentioned that... like "Well, we will rename now, and people will rush to check out what's new in this Perl 7. Then they'll see the Changelog, see literally a listing of fixes... of a few bugs being fixed, and conclude that they've been tricked. This isn't at all Perl 7, that's god knows what".
04:52@ash: So... so I think we need to rename now, but put in the Changelog more than the diff between the previous version and perl 5.20.
04:58@degtyarev-dm: So you really think this will help - like it will attract new users... followers, whatever we call them. And you don't feel that people who... kinda lurk around, even those who write in a different language but also keep an eye on Perl, (you don't feel) they will say "Um... but nothing has changed. This is the same Perl 5: They just renamed it to Perl 7, added a large Changelog. But inside it is just the same"
05:27@ash: Well no. For starters the addition of a large Changelog already implies that a lot of work has been done. Therefore it isn't just a mere rename.
05:37@sharifulin: In my eye this will work extremely well in terms of PR. And there are arguments along the lines - you come to your sysadmin and ask him to install you a new version of Perl, say 5.18. And the sysadmin replies "Say, what's wrong with the current version that comes with Ubuntu?" And you start mumbling "weeeeell there's better unicode, and some bug in that module is fixed, and the docs got improved..." But this isn't impressive at all. But when you say "I need Perl version 7 installed" that's a completely different ballgame, even for someone like a sysadmin. And after that it is likely (the requested version of Perl) will be installed, and there will be more chances to use the latest versions of Perl.
06:17@sharifulin: And even go as far as the following "hit" or trick I'd say in Russian - declare the version (perl -v output) as 'Perl 7'. Specifying unintelligible perl7 is going to be much cooler than what we write now: use v five dot fourteen, sixteen, eighteen, etc. And version 5.20 in my opinion, given everyone likes to drop trailing zeros, the version will be (read) like 5.2. Also doesn't do shit for PR, and I think 5.20, 5.22 these will be purely (viewed as) increments, and nothing more.
06:46@ash: Though among the suggestions (during the shitstorm) there also was the idea to drop not the zero but the five and the dot, after which we would get version 20 for instance, Perl 20. It seems to me this will be extremely cool - like Firefox 20, well what makes it different from Firefox 14.
07:01@ash: But yeah - about the question that was asked: Yes I believe... Well I don't know if this will raise more... increase of interest in Perl among programmers, especially among young programmers who are at a crossroad which language to choose. But at the very least it (renaming of Perl) will definitely result in huge amount of hype in the press, on blogs, you name it. That Perl after... given Perl 5.0 was released in 1994, now in the year 2013... Oh! There is in fact a good opportunity to release Perl 7 on the 17th of October 2014, which will be exactly 10 years since the release of 5.0.
07:40@ash: But in any case the release of Perl 7 will result in a series of internet publications which will attract unintelligible
@sharifulin: I will write a little post on my blog!
@ash: Which will be closed soon on you
@sharifulin: I'll get off Posterous and everything will be fine
@degtyarev-dm: unintelligible
07:54@degtyarev-dm: But who actually currently makes decisions about... The community for instance - who/what is it? After all someone does manage the Perl Foundation...
@ash: For that we should have invited Ruslan Zakirov (@ruz) , he would of course answer this question more thoroughly.
08:11@ash: There is this p5p - Perl 5 Porters, which is (consisting of the people) developing Perl 5. I am not very familiar with what it is they are doing, to be honest... But they seem to be the main resistance to any kinds of changes, because they are trying to make Perl... the next version of Perl compatible with all the preceding versions. Which of course is hard - I understand that. But... there is also Larry Wall of course... There also are people like Matt S Trout (@shadowcat-mst) , who also... can yell rather loudly - their opinion is heard.
08:47@degtyarev-dm: And Larry Wall himself, he for real influences, in your opinion, the current dev...
08:53@ash: Larry Wall.. Yes, he is real ;) And... unintelligible
@sharifulin: I have a photo with him
@koorchik: You don't say!
@ash: I don't know to what extent he does or doesn't influence (the development), but at the very least... Like... we already had a writeup in one of the newsletters of (the upcoming) YAPC::EU in Kiev - Larry Wall's answer (quotes in paragraph titled "Last Week") to my question what he generally thinks about Perl 7. And he answered like... it'd be better if we first finish Perl 6.
09:24@koorchik: Speaking of - what would happen to Perl 6 if Perl 7 is released?
09:28@ash: Yes, unintelligible it seems that this is the very question which evokes such rage on any mention of Perl 7. Because these who criticize the idea of Perl 7 are saying "But how can this be - there are these 10 developers who for 10 years have been developing Perl 6, but now we will say that nobody needs them, and this will hurt their feelings and they will walk away." But... so what - nothing will happen to it (Perl 6) - it will simply be a separate language. I mean in practice...
09:54@ash: In general a very strange situation has emerged: Perl 6 started evolving as a sequel to Perl 5. After a while it was officially stated that this is not Perl 5 at all - this a completely different language. And the name is just a name, like it is with Perl 5. But now it turns out we can not name (something) Perl 7. If there is Perl 7 it will seem like a sequel to Perl 6, and Perl 6 is not Perl 5 at all. Therefore - what is Perl 7 - not a continuation of Perl 5. In order to create a sequel to Perl 5 we need to create Perl 6. So...
10:27@sharifulin: Which is nowhere to be seen.
@ash: ... And that's the current situation.
10:30@degtyarev-dm: So we have Perl 6 which is not, like, exactly Perl as known today and which should not in any way affect (Perl 5), but in reality we can't name (something) Perl 6. Perl 5 unintelligible
10:40@ash: Well the number 6 is reserved for... claimed by a language which is not Perl anymore and which in general doesn't yet exist. A couple years ago Rakudo Star was released, and we actually talked about it during our first podcast. There was hope back then: "Wow cool, now there is a Perl 6 in some shape and form!" But two years later it (Rakudo Star) is approximately where it started.
11:06@degtyarev-dm: Yeah... that's a rather slow progress.
@ash: OTOH people... Well yeah, March 20th 2011 (is when the first podcast where we talked about it took place), I just checked. Yeah... and now Rakudo needs to be rewritten for the Java VM, (Given that) Parrot... there were internal conflicts among the Parrot developers. In other words Parrot doesn't really exist anymore. And Perl (6) is rewritten to run on (a different) VM, the NQP, grammars... so like everything. And at the end we end up with no Rakudo, no Rakudo Star, no Perl 6. This is all rather sad.
11:41@degtyarev-dm: And what do you think...
11:42@koorchik: Maybe it... Maybe it'd be worth it to rename Perl 6 as well to... some sort of Perl++... or something
11:50@ash: This... this is one of the possibilities, yes. Perl++ like a Perl... C++... the original name of C++ is "C with Classes", therefore Perl++ would be "Perl with classes", right? Which also actually makes some sense.
@sharifulin: Perl--
@ash: Heh, Perl--
@sharifulin: Perl without Classes
12:05@ash: But, but, but there is another problem. If Perl 6 is to be renamed now to something else, e.g. Camelia like it was suggested... the butterfly... sketched on the fly[4] . Then again - what do we do with Perl 5. When we get to shipping the next major version - what would it be? If we go for Perl 6, then googling anything about Perl 6 will be impossible. It will be completely unclear what Perl 6 is - is it the Camelia that used to be Perl 6, or is it the new (major) version of Perl 5... In other words the number 6 is already lost for the preceding Perl. So the choice is to either finish Perl 6, or to jump directly to Perl 7 which will be a sequel not to Perl 6 but to Perl 5.
12:46@sharifulin: I propose to skip the number 6, just like airplane seat-maps skip row 13. This is a rather sane argument - people dislike 6, dislike 13... solely on a visual basis.
12:59@ash: No one came up with this before...
@sharifulin: Well look - this is why I'm here
@degtyarev-dm: (The number) 6 is only viewed unfavorably by perlers I think, everyone else is fine with it.
13:08@degtyarev-dm: Right. In general... there is some logic (in all of this) I guess... Though I am unclear - did anyone ever ask the Perl 6 developers what do they think about this? Or they...
13:23@ash: The sole comment I've seen...
@sharifulin: Of the sole developer :D
@ash: ... was by Patric Michaud (@pmichaud) . It was a (facebook) "like" at one of the YAPC::EU posts, the one showing a Perl 7 t-shirt[5]. That's everything... that's all the comments I've seen.
13:39@sharifulin: He simply admitted defeat with this "like".
13:41@ash: Well, I don't remember if the "like" was specifically on the Perl 7 t-shirt, or whether it was on the second post, where several t-shirt variants were offered as a choice.
@degtyarev-dm: And...
@sharifulin: But let's be objective - the second post...
13:52@ash: But at the very least they (Perl 6 developers) are aware that all of this (conversation) is happening. But they did not comment on this publicly in any way.
14:00@degtyarev-dm: And what about your site perl6.ru. Heh, I guess you wrote this right? I am reading here you got a letter...
14:11@ash: Yeah, I got a letter couple days ago, about... Well such letters of course are sent regularly to any domain (owner): "I am interested in the purchase of your domain perl6.ru. I am offering 25,000 RUB (close to 800USD). I am also willing to consider purchasing other domains." So there you have it - a real chance to make money from Perl 6. I also own the domains perl5.ru, perl7.ru, so... I'll be all right.
14:34@degtyarev-dm: You are planning for the future there. Though perl8 was already snatched right?
@ash: That's perl8.org, perl8.ru I believe is still free...
@sharifulin: Gone!
14:46@degtyarev-dm: Got it...I guess this is all very complicated and murky. I personally think nobody will ever jump straight to Perl 7. Things will simply continue to be pushed along as-is. This topic is really... rather complex and I do not really see some sort of unilateral decision. There is no way to make everyone happy at the same time, hence it may make sense to just cut (the version), and start calling things 7, 8, 9... On the other hand what difference does it make how it (Perl) is called, if it is all the same inside? I think this (name change) will have no tangible effect on the evolution (of Perl).
15:32@ash: The evolution won't (be affected), but the popularity most likely will be. Awareness will definitely be (affected/raised).
15:39@koorchik: But let's take say Perl 5.20 - is it already known what kind of changes it will contain? Maybe they will just be substantial enough to warrant Perl 7.
@ash: I am not aware...
15:50@koorchik: For example I heard that there is still ongoing discussion to have a MOP added to the core. That could be exactly the kind of thing warranting a major release.
16:01@ash: But, but...In reality we can, as I said earlier, add a large diff from 5.10. But we don't even have to do that - we can keep the small diff, but at the same time, in Perl 7 leave (some) warts behind: e.g. use strict, use utf8...What else... Features that one needs to add via use feature 5.010... well or use 5.010, use 5.012, etc. The 1;, or just a 1 at the end of a module... That kind of... stinky substance... we can simply get rid of it. We can say "We got rid of legacy, it (Perl) is now incompatible with version 5, but now it is cool, modern, concise... just... just like the general idea of Perl as a whole - it needs to be cool, concise and modern.
16:51@degtyarev-dm: And what would be done about CPAN?
unintelligible
@ash: There is nothing to be done about CPAN ... unintelligible ... with a new version.
17:00@degtyarev-dm: (Regarding the sudden interference) Someone was moving something there...
@sharifulin: Alien beings are meddling with our broadcast
@degtyarev-dm: Dunno..
17:09@ash: Nothing needs to be done about CPAN. For starters there is CPAN6 - like in cpan6.org - which I am not sure what it is exactly... There is also the sub-domain modules.perl6.org which I think is actually called something else... But yeah so what - there will be a new version of Perl, there will be new modules. Nothing prevents uploading to CPAN yet another version of some module, which will support Perl 7. I don't think this is an actual problem in any way... Also it will be immediately clear - if a module supports Perl 7, it means it is more or less up to date. So one can chop away all the cruft.
17:43@sharifulin: One can even add such a feature - have a category on CPAN which will say "Perl 7 Modules".
17:49@ash: Actually on CPAN's main page, if one doesn't go to search.cpan.org, but simply to cpan.org, there are categories like WWW and so on, and there is also Perl 6 as a separate category[6].
17:58@degtyarev-dm: Yeah, I guess I agree in general. Well - time will tell. We'll eventually see what happens. Though as I already mentioned this is not the first such discussion, nor the last one. And folks will keep talking for a while. Whether anything will actually change - that is the interesting question of course. But do you...
18:16@ash: unintelligible heh. Yes, heh. This issue currently bothers many people... For instance... like what we are going to discuss next - the post "Fat vs Thin Core . It mentions among other things that Perl 5 is getting a bit outdated. In addition to this there was this presentation by Stevan Little (@stevan) called... what was it called "The Death of Perl" or something... It also goes like "Hey dudes, it's time, it's the 21st century and all that"... But yeah I still hope... that reason will prevail.
18:58@degtyarev-dm: And have you actually spoken to someone, like, say Ruslan Zakirov, about maybe, dunno, burning all bridges and starting from scratch.
19:08@ash: Well I did exchange couple lines with Ruslan, so in reality we haven't discussed anything. On the other hand I received a ton of mail full of swearing along the lines of "Why did you mention the word "seven" in public. You are a bad person, and you are going to destroy Perl with your... with your publication".
19:29@sharifulin: And on top of that you are a conference organizer, as you were reminded unintelligible
19:32@ash: Yeah, as a conference organizer you must be... like good friends with all the old farts, ought to show respect, and should never utter the word "seven" in public. That's it.
19:41@degtyarev-dm: Seriously...?
19:42@ash: I don't think this is right... In reality... I mean jokes aside - at the YAPC::EU last year (2012) in Frankfurt they had official t-shirts which said Perl 5. And it was a huge "5" - dunno covering the entire front, or back. The big "5" of Perl 5, with which they indirectly stated "For us Perl 5 is better than Perl 6".
20:07@ash: In response I made this half-joke suggestion to make a t-shirt for the Kiev conference this year that would say "Perl 7". With the same horse-sized "7". And this of course was... this is what started everything.
20:24@ash: In other words... I don't want to see people say "Perl 5 is our future". This just isn't true.
20:33@degtyarev-dm: So you believe that we need to move towards a rename and...
@ash: Yes, I believe...
@degtyarev-dm: ... or better even to write a new language... possibly. Based on what we currently have.
20:44@ash: To write a new language this is... hm. This is easier said than done. Stevan Little whom I mentioned before - he came up with a proposal to rewrite Perl 5 - note specifically 5, not 6 but 5 - (to rewrite) from scratch. This is to be done in Scala. I don't know how much success he had with this... There is also the domain perl8.org, which we also mentioned. Which is just an i-frame towards the site scalalang.org.
21:15@ash: But I do not really subscribe to the idea that it is possible to rewrite the programming language of Perl in a different language. On the other hand we do have a precedent when the Japanese programmer... no, Taiwanese (translation omitted)[7] Audrey Tang (@audreyt) wrote Pugs in Haskell.
21:34@ash: But this is such a developer... people who have seen how she programs are simply shocked. Seeing how her fingers are flying across the keyboard while producing sensible code which compiles Perl 6. But as we know Pugs has not been evolving for years now[8]. I am afraid that the same will happen to (the implementation in) Scala. In general I find it rather puzzling why write in Scala when the objective is a language which is fast. Currently one of the advantages of Perl is that many tasks, left alone regular expressions, execute faster than any other similar program in other languages.
22:16@degtyarev-dm: Right. OK, then what about this article... Moving on, I guess we ought to switch the topic. There is this article we would like to talk about, which also rather fits the current discussion. "Fat vs thin core" , which (article) was also recently published on blogs.perl.org, by someone Jeff Thalhammer (@thaljef) . In this article he expressed his puzzlement why can't we switch... why can't the core be extended, and why things can't be switched to something more up to date, more modern. Why can't we leave behind some outdated modules, but instead we keep dragging them along and maintaining them. Anatoly - what is your opinion on this?
23:09@sharifulin: To be honest I have not read the article, so I don't have many thoughts on this issue. I am focusing on Perl 7 and am waiting when it will become reality.
23:20@degtyarev-dm: Are you already rewriting your CPAN modules for Perl 7...
@sharifulin: Well I already have a fork which on perl -v says Perl version 7 and I am happy!
23:28@ash: Oh yeah - we forgot to mention forks. After this shitstorm another suggestion came up, which the folks opposing Perl 7 were very happy with. A suggestion by Matt S Trout to simply make a fork of Perl 5 and not call it Perl at all, but Pumpkin Perl, as in pumpkin. There's a bit of wordplay going on there, which is only understood by fluent English speakers. Pumpkin is what one calls the people who... actually produce the official Perl releases. He (Matt) believes that this will solve all the problems we discussed - like: what is Perl 7 - is it a sequel to Perl 6, or is it 5, or is it something else. He believes that if we are to rename all of these issues will be resolved. Heh, he also added that given "Pumpkin" is a pumpkin (the vegetable), and of course everyone have read "Cinderella", so he was like "Yep, yep - Perl already turned into a pumpkin, so why not rename it to pumpkin". Absolute shit...
24:32@degtyarev-dm: Heh, but this would also offend the folks releasing the current Perl 5 and it will be a complete...
24:39@ash: I believe that for anyone to get offended in general is... it's just stupid. Because... Well, let's see who might get offended: We may offend the P5P... but actually why would they get offended if it's going to be another language (name)... Next we are hurting the feelings of the developers of Perl 6, though it is currently only assumed they will be offended, they actually haven't said anything. But yeah well, we are sorry.- they keep hurting our feelings for 10 years now. And... that's it - nobody else will be offended. Everyone else, I think, will be only happy that Perl is not perishing, like...
25:13@sharifulin: Though this raises one question - who will be maintaining Perl 7 from there on...
@ash: Yes, this is also...
@sharifulin: ... If the porters get offended, the four of us... five of us here won't be able to do much (as maintainers), just saying.
25:23@degtyarev-dm: And... a development which would lead to an extension of the Perl 5 core - are you not considering this? That now 5 is...
25:36@ash: I read a little of this post... towards the end. It has few comments, which would mean it is an interesting idea. 14 comments versus the 51 on Ovid's original post, not counting all subsequent posts and comments. But here... what I was personally concerned by is the following. So here's the general idea (of the post) - we have Perl which contains CGI (support) by default. Let's build-in something else instead, something that is currently modern. And the problem is - what is currently considered modern, who can say this? For instance he lists in his article Catalyst, Dancer, Mason. Mason! - very modern. Yeah also...
26:14@sharifulin: unintelligible Barbara Mason.
@ash: .. Yeah, he also should have written HTML::Template there, and Mojolicious.
@sharifulin: unintelligible
26:22@ash: And... why actually... So the problem isn't even about personal preferences, but in... what does one choose out of these four, or we can extend the list... Someone likes Dancer, someone Mojo. We have @vti here, who knows a little bit about Mojo...licious. And all of these things are like... side-project. And why they should be in the Perl core. And we've seen in the case of Mojolicious that people writing (it) can sometimes have a fallout, and if this (project) is in the core - I'm sorry but...
26:56@sharifulin: The Mojolicious author himself is against having it in the core. Because it means that development will stop. Everything won't (be able to) change from version to version.
27:04@ash: Yeah, but if one actually reads the comments - there's a sane idea there. People are suggesting, like actually... who was it that left that cool comment... like even PSGI which is built on top of W... Ah yes, it was actually @Miyagawa who commented. He said that Python and WSGI together with Django and Ruby and Rack and Rails - they are not at all a part of the core of neither Python nor Ruby. Instead they are simply separate products which became popular, and almost a de-facto standard. The same is the situation also with C++, which has libraries... The standard library of C++ is in no way included in the language. Yet it is considered standard and it is officially steered by a committee and so on. But in the language it is not present.
27:52@ash: So I think that the problem of choosing a framework for interacting with the web - it must remain (a problem) for the individual. So one can't include Dancer in the core and offer it to everyone.
28:05@degtyarev-dm: Right, the original idea consisted of the desire to reduce the size of the core and throw away outdated modules like CGI.pm... yeah.
28:17@ash: But in general I like the idea very much - it reminds me of the question "what's better - a RISC CPU or a CISC CPU". It's better if the core were small, of course. It will be easier to maintain it, there will be fewer bugs and so on. On the other hand... When the discussions about Perl 7 were ongoing, it was often asked: Who will keep supporting Perl 5, given its source contains constructs of such complexity, that nobody is prepared to figure it all out. Nobody is prepared to support the current codebase, as simple as that.
28:50@degtyarev-dm: Well, wouldn't throwing out such... we could say key, for the time being, modules, like CGI, wouldn't the growth of Perl... Specifically its expansion, in the horizontal plane so to speak, wouldn't it be stopped? Because for instance it (Perl) is bundled with git, which comes with gitweb, which in turn uses this very same CGI module... At the very least this is a good example - how can one throw away such a module?
29:22@ash: Well... then it (CGI.pm) needs to be left in.
29:24@ash: Errr, no, if we... Look. Everything is yet again solved by a major version change. Perl 7 - without CGI. That's it. Period. And whoever needs CGI - needs to use Perl 5.8. There are no issues at all with this, I think. Actually this is quite excellent - let's indeed have Perl 7 without CGI
29:44@degtyarev-dm: Hehe, I approve. When do we start? :)
29:49@degtyarev-dm: OK, let's see what other interesting stuff has happened. An excellent new e-zine was published. Actually most of the current participants of this podcast have had a hand in it. And Viacheslav recently became a publisher... of this e-zine. Right?
30:10@vti: Well... what do you mean a publisher. I run the make command and copy the result to a server. That's all there is to my "publishing".
30:18@degtyarev-dm: Um, do publishers do anything else? :)
30:23@vti: Well... I don't know... Maybe the contemporary ones do exactly that as well.
30:26@ash: Oh stop it, I think you are just being modest. You had to talk to authors, and then get them... get them to actually write the articles within the alloted time, get all of this formatted, reformatted, add links, distribute... I don't think a make binary can do that.
30:41@sharifulin: Maybe he has just such a make binary :) Which could on top of that create us a Perl 7, eh Viacheslav? :)
30:49@vti: Well, yeah of course... I am omitting a lot of stuff... which came up that I didn't originally think much of. Until now there were only two issues, so there isn't much to talk about.
31:06@degtyarev-dm: And how was the idea born initially? Was it yours or did you... lift it from somewhere, dunno how to word it..
@vti: Well... I'd say it was mine... But why it formed... I don't even know.
31:26@degtyarev-dm: But you currently feel the lack of some sort of materials in Russian...
31:33@vti: I personally do not lack anything - I completely... I've never looked at the Russian-speaking crowd and blogs and literature, so... Well also due to the fact that none of these (resources) currently exist... I wished that those who need such resources will have stuff to read. Therefore currently...
31:56@ash: It looks like it is needed, as you already have 474 subscribers, which is rather cool.
32:05@degtyarev-dm: You see, it looks kinda strange, we spoke about this in one of the podcasts: Your blog is after all in English, you target the wider, English-speaking audience. Yet you decided to publish the e-zine in Russian.
32:25@vti: The e-zine does not really represent my (personal) point of view. It is more of an opportunity to gather those who would like to share something, but are not being read by anyone. Either they are not known, or simply have a hard time making themselves write something. So like... For me the e-zine is more like an organization. I just add some small articles with generic content. Maybe at some point I'll find time to write something more substantial, to express my own point of view about some... dunno module, or programming in general. But for the time being this is purely about organization: to gather everyone together, to poke some folks, to take an interview... That's it from my side.
33:19@koorchik: Viacheslav, don't you want to make an English version of this? Or is the Russian one just that - a test drive for a variant of this product, after which you'll launch it for a wider audience.
@sharifulin: For a fee.
@koorchik: Well why not - this idea is being already exploited. You (Viacheslav) already have a clear competition in the face of Gabor (Szabo), who doesn't know how to produce e-pubs unintelligible variants. Left alone that he is such an old-school grandpa - spreading mass-mailings and bragging about his subscriber count. So you can totally outdo him by creating an English version. Do you have such plans, or you haven't thought about this.
33:57@vti: Even if I had a plan... I don't even know. In English there are both more blogs and more publications, so I don't know there's a niche that hasn't been already filled. So I don't think someone... Well I suppose if this (publication) is available for free people will be subscribing and reading, but I do not think that this will be so... That it will generate as much interest as the Russian one, at least for the time being.
34:30@koorchik: And does it take you a lot of time to create an issue? So far you got two, as far as I know. Understandably the first issue was rather large, but if we take the second one - how much time does it take.
34:42@vti: The second... the second took me longer because... After all... When I was preparing the first issue I didn't even read the articles much... I don't know why I trusted the authors. When I began preparing the second issue I started reading the articles more carefully... I was of course totally shocked, how did I manage to publish the first issue with such quality. Thus the second issue took me longer... much longer.
35:14@koorchik: But how long are we talking - a week, a month...?
@vti: About a week at least. By a week I mean about two hours ever day.
35:23@koorchik: And how many do you plan... or how often do you plan to publish issues? Do you have some sort of schedule, or when you feel like it?
@vti: I plan (an issue) at the beginning of every month. If there are articles... If there aren't enough, well... That's also why I didn't officially announce the frequency of publications, so I do not limit myself in either direction.
35:48@koorchik: Are you happy with the feedback you are already receiving, and in general with the product you ended up with? Understandably it's still a bit early to talk about this but still?
35:57@vti: Well, there was more positive than negative feedback, so I guess yeah.
@koorchik: Anyone told you that it's absolute crap and you are wasting your time?
@vti: No, directly per email such... complete... how do I say...
@sharifulin: Viacheslav, so you didn't get my mails then right? :D
@vti: No, negative email hasn't...
@sharifulin: Check your spam-folder please ;)
unintelligible
36:35@ash: Also...
@sharifulin: Oh yes we have more news!
@ash: Also we have... Well first of all we can't omit mentioning the YAPC::EU conference. We are preparing for it in strides. We are also going to travel with Anatoly, that's why he's here, to the Dutch Perl Workshop. It will take place not far from Amsterdam, about an hour away. About 30 people have registered to participate, most of them naturally are locals. (Except for) me, Anatoly, and one more person from Germany. There I submitted a talk about Perl 7 - it will be rather interesting to receive some feedback. Especially given that among the participants are some of the people who wrote me rage-mails explaining what a bad person I am.
37:18@sharifulin: He also wants to hear all of this directly to his face. I think I will stand by with a camera and record all of this. Breaking news! :D
37:25@ash: In general this (Perl 7 situation) turned out to be exceeding amounts of fun, and I am very curious where it will all lead. Because also... I was planning to have a large... to have a large round-table discussion at the Kiev conference, I don't know maybe I'll just cancel it, like couple days ahead of time... And in addition all of the noise around Perl 7 also provoked interest at the North American conference YAPC::NA 2013' . They published... opened an idea collector page, and the most voted (suggestion) also turned out to be a round table on the future of Perl. So I think the upcoming events, especially if things are forced a bit, are going to prove very interesting in terms of clarifying at least a bit what will happen to Perl in the near...
38:19@sharifulin: Let me interrupt, I also have a small piece of news. I publish all my presentations on SlideShare , like done by most probably. Recently they launched a very interesting, I would say killer-feature: every week they send you a diff of the view counts of your presentation. From that I can tell: First and foremost - the most popular presentation I've uploaded is the announcement of YAPC::EU , which I presented at FOSDEM. So far it had 8000 views, which is very cool - This is the most popular presentation possible about Perl, I think, in both Russian and English segments.
38:58@sharifulin: But what's also interesting is that people are looking at my Russian presentations, some of which are even translations (from English): about Perl 5.16... about the changes from 5.10 to 5.16. And yet again this points out... underscores the point that people are curious, I mean developers are curious what is in the pipes after the current version of Perl 5 they have on their old old Ubuntu - I bet's it's a 5.8 or 5.10. So they are interested and the viewcount reaches 5000 views, 10000 views, and people keep watching and watching and watching. I don't even know how are they finding (the presentations), probably via some targeted links. For instance the presentation "Perl is Alive" which was given in Petersburg - 3000 views. I don't know what interesting stuff folks found in it, but they are clearly intrigued.
39:44@sharifulin: Therefore, just like Andrew said, the topic of Perl 7 or the future Perl (he named the conference in Kiev thus for a reason) - this topic will be teeming with life and I am in general very happy that we have gathered here and now and are discussing all of this. And we are going to travel "To a fight" at the workshop near Amsterdam, and there we'll find out the opinions of the rest, who are older than us, maybe even stronger ;) But they (the community) are a meritocracy, and such people would have more influence on the evolution of Perl, as opposed to us here sitting around talking in Russian.
40:23@ash: About... about presentations - yeah indeed. I also among my presentations have "Perl 5.10, new features in 5.12 ... relative to the rest of the presentations it indeed looks very popular. I don't know whether this popularity represents mostly Perl programmers, or the rest of the audience after all - I would be interested to find this out. But in general... I am reading a lot of .pm mailing lists, and I don't remember where, but recently there was this large post with a list of presentations about new features in Perl. Like it listed my presentation, the presentation Pavel Vlasov (@fxzuz) made last year in Kiev regarding 5.16... In short people find such presentations really interesting, even though it would seem that folks who program in Perl can get this (information) on their own. But no - they nevertheless really enjoy...
41:14@sharifulin: Well they don't exactly... Most of them are "lazy", as in they are lazy, and therefore they are interested in such facts in the form of...
@ash: No, but if you read the Perl 5 Changelog there...
@sharifulin: ... yeah but that takes a long time...
@ash: ... left alone it is a rather monotonic list of both notable and minor changes. And when the presentation is given unintelligible...
@sharifulin: If it is by Andrew Shitov, or by Anatoly Sharifulin - it's a very cool one.
@ash: Right. Pavel Vlasov's even has a video.
41:38@degtyarev-dm: unintelligible ... April 1st video
@sharifulin: Video...?
@ash: Video about what, about Perl 5.16?
@degtyarev-dm: I don't know, this is what you wrote Andrew: "First April Video", as in "one", "April", "Video".
41:50@ash: Ah I see. No, this was written by Viacheslav. In connection with the Kiev conference, we made a video for April 1st , claiming that this year presentations given in the main hall must be submitted not as files, but on 35mm film.
42:10@degtyarev-dm: Hehe, that'll be some competition...
42:13@ash: But I am actually very happy with this video, despite the fact it didn't have as many views as I would have liked. It was a cool collaboration with the guy who actually filmed this, he also participated in the script a bit. He came up with... it was his idea that exactly in this building 20 years ago in Kiev took place the first... first get-together of the first Perl user group in the Ukraine. He also spliced in some footage of a guy in a jacket... with (a backdrop of) a coat of arms and a Lenin... making a presentation about Perl unintelligible.
42:48@ash: On the other hand, we of course hesitated for some time whether we should make this at all. Because folks who are coming from abroad, to this day still fear the territory of the former Soviet Union. Heh, there are folks who attempted to come to Kiev once, forgot their passport, and now will never come in their lifetime. They even declared they are boycotting (the conference). But I mean... I think everything will be just fine.
43:14@degtyarev-dm: Yeah, people are, as they say, afraid of the snow.
43:17@ash: No, they fear the unknown. Because over there one has different money, different language. different alphabet, even different people - everything is different. This isn't Europe in their eye... I really want to break out of this mold. It would be awesome if the conference were in Moscow, but... As soon as Russia and the EU reciprocally remove their visa requirements, we will submit an application for Moscow.
@sharifulin: Right around Perl version 5.46
@ash: Yeah... in that case we will... pull out all the stops completely...
43:56@degtyarev-dm: I see. Well it looks like we talked about everything. If nobody objects we should probably be wrapping up... I guess nobody objects.
@sharifulin: Heh, they are no longer connected I think. When they heard about Ukraine - that was it...
@ash: They got scared.
@sharifulin: Yeah they got scared.
@ash: Guys, are you alive there?
@koorchik: For the time being.
@degtyarev-dm: Bye everyone
@vti: Take care
@ash: Bye
@vti: Bye
[1] In Russian slang this could indicate explicit intent to consume alcohol ;)
[2] The closest translation I could come up with. And I like the visual it evokes - so there.
[3] In the recording @ash actually misspoke and said "five seven".
[4] The literal expression can be translated as "Drawn on one's knee"
[5] The like in question was actually made on some tangential post - most probably https://www.facebook.com/wgavdijk/posts/146134055549990
[6] This indeed used to be the case. The category listing was retired during the cpan.org redesign couple years ago, since it was virtually unmaintained.
[7] I just censored a translation of a passage which, albeit condescending, is acceptable in the source culture but deeply offensive in the target one. I am not proud of this, but it is a practical way to keep CoC-lovers away :(
[8] This currently does not seem to be the case - there is moderate recent activity
- Bulk of translation:
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ribasushi: Peter Rabbitson <ribasushi@cpan.org> - Corrections and clarifications
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Andrew Shitov mna
Thanks for the write-up Peter. Very enlightening to read.